Point of No Return in pictures

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Feature story - 22 January, 2013

The world is quickly reaching a point of no return for preventing the worst impacts of climate change. Continuing on the current course will make it difficult, if not impossible, to prevent the widespread and catastrophic impacts of climate change. The costs will be substantial: billions spent to deal with the destruction of extreme weather events, untold human suffering and the deaths of tens of millions from the impacts by as soon as 2030.

Elektrownia Patnów Coal Fired Power Station. The world burns too much coal, oil and gas. That’s why we could soon pass the point for preventing catastrophic climate change.

Wall of Fire. People are already suffering from the impacts of climate change. The world has heated up by just under 1 degree Celsius already.

Hurricane Sandy Aftermath. Climate change is already supercharging our weather. People are suffering and dying now from climate change. The destruction is enormous. Governments have promised to keep climate change in check. Instead, they are ignoring the warnings of science and allowing these projects, pushing them even.

Coal Mine in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Indonesia will allow the destruction of vast areas of wilderness in Kalimantan, on the Island of Borneo, to mine more coal.

Shell Kulluk Rig Assessment off Kodiak Island. An oil and gas rush may start soon in the fragil Arctic. Big companies, like Shell, want to take advantage of the destruction of sea ice, caused by climate change, to exploit this beautiful area.

Polar Bear in the Arctic. The sensitive wildlife of the Arctic are at great risk from oil and gas development.

Alberta Tar Sands. Canada plans to triple dirty oil production from the tar sands, causing a big boost in CO2 emissions. Vast areas of wilderness have already been destroyed to get at the oil.

Estuary in Great Bear Rainforest. To open new markets, mainly in Asia, a pipeline is planned to run through 1,000+ kilometres of mainly wilderness across the Rocky Mountains and through the spectacular Great Bear Rainforest to the west coast of British Columbia.

Spirit Bear in Great Bear Rainforest. The fragile Great Bear Rainforest is at risk.

Dolphins in Brazil. Brazil plans to allow exploitation of oil just off its coast. Dolphins, whales and other species will suffer.

Xuanwei Power Station in China. The irony is we don’t need to burn coal, oil and gas. We don’t need more to run our economies.

Dafeng Power Station in China. Clean and safe renewable energy, and more efficient use of energy, can run our planet. We can avoid the climate chaos of these 14 major coal, oil and gas projects.

A new Greenpeace report, Point of No Return, on these projects shows how they will lock in climate chaos.

Report: Point of No Return

ThePoint of No Return highlights the hypocrisy of governments. They have promised to keep warming under 2°C. Yet they are promoting projects that will push warming past 3.5° and 4° and likely to 6°. A frightening future.